by Suzette Mayr
Now, he will go and try to win Walter back by going to the old bar and asking Walter for a dance. On the website he sees that certain nights are twenty-five-cent wing nights so for sure Walter will be there. One song. What can be worse than that?
Petra
Petra shops for a graduation dress. She would rather be shopping with Tamsin or even Angela or Kate, but her mother’s said that if it’s going to be that kind of money, she wants to be there too, Miss Too-Good-For-Outlet-Malls.
Petra pushes Odette in her stroller while their mother fingers through the rainbowed racks of insanely ugly dresses.
— So is Tomáš renting a tux? asks her mother. — Or just a regular suit? Does he already have a suit? We could match his tie and cummerbund to your dress.
— He’s renting a tux, lies Petra, watching Odette reach up with her hands for a trailing sash.
— Well, says her mother, — we’ll tell him what colour after we get your dress tonight. — Oh Odette, honey, no!
Odette gumming the sash.
— Petra, don’t let her do that. Her mother tugs a pink, blobby affair off the rack, fans it open across herself. — How about this one? She holds it up against Petra, the froth around the neck sticking to Petra’s lip gloss.
— Looks like an abortion, says Petra.
— Petra! says her mother, turning back to the row of dresses. — I have had it up to here with you. Up to here.
— I’m gonna go get a juice or something.
— You do that, says her mother. — And while you’re at it, get a glass of attitude overhaul.
Petra slinks past the brightly lit stores, mannequins gesturing at nothing, she cannot hear the music in the speaker, all she hears is her death song. She peers at Laura Secord chocolate bars pyramided under glass, walls of runners and skis and snowboards in a sports gear shop. She is almost at the Juice Bar when she stifles a scream because she sees him, she’s sure it’s him. The dead boy pushing a giant philodendron in a grocery cart.
But of course it’s not. It’s not.
But behind him is Ginger’s grampa sitting at a food-court table with a cardboard cup of coffee. And it is Ginger sitting across from him — Petra’s heart ticks too quickly, attached to a bomb— also with a cardboard cup, twisting the cup in his hand, unrolling the edges as his grandfather animatedly tells him some-thing. The old man with grey hairs bristling out his ears and nose, Ginger sitting frozen like a mannequin, except for the twisting cup in his fingers. The physical pain she feels seeing him, how she can’t catch her breath, how she has to turn right back around without her juice and walk, just walk, back to her mother.
— Mom? she asks.
— I think Odette’s just swallowed a button, says her mother.
— Mommy? asks Petra, the thudding hum in her ears.
— Not now, Petra, she says, Odette squirming in her arms between them.
Fourth Monday After Furey
Maureen and Max
Mrs. Meeny Miney Mo Maureen Mochinski and that little shithead Jésus García Hernández sit side by side in the principal’s office, pinned into a corner by a tiny round table, the principal clippy in his desk across from them. It was never her plan to take Jésus to administration; normally she’s good at isolating the bomb, containing the explosion. Then the little jeezler reports her to the principal. She’s never ever sent anyone to the principal or the veeps. Not since she was a new teacher with clean, moist hands and her freshly ironed blouse, still believing that education was about teaching, not mob management.
Fluorescent lights buzzing above. Her back kinked into one of those goddamn plastic school chairs. She might as well dig her own shallow grave and slink in right now. Squeeze her eyes tight and jam her fingers into her nostrils as they shovel in chunks of dirt. She has had an okay life, a short life, a life spent sharing a bed with a liar and a cheater, a life spent chasing after mouthy sociopaths the world calls teenagers. A life spent away from her own soul.
— Mrs. Mochinski says you deliberately provoked her by trying to give her an apple, Jésus, says the principal.
— She kicked me in the ass, Jésus says.
Jésus’s legs spread wide in front of him. Maureen wonders what it is about males and their having to air their balls whenever they sit down. Principal Applegate’s face whizzes across the desk nose-to-nose with Jésus.
— Excuse me, Mr. García Hernández? he says, his nose crinkling.
— She kicked me in the posterior, says Jésus.
— Mrs. Mochinski? the principal says.
— I have presented my case, Principal Applegate, says Maureen. — It was not the fact of the apple. It was the way in which it was presented to me. Shoved in my face.
She’s angled into the corner, the table edge aimed at her ribcage, and he’s making her sit and defend herself against this punky, pukey punk. Jésus did try to give her an apple, a monstrous display of sarcasm and disrespect, and she did kick him in the ass. But no one except Jésus knows she kicked him square in the butt. Luckily with the side of her shoe and not the pointy heel or toe.
— Did you or did you not try to give Mrs. Mochinski an apple, Jésus?
— I did. I thought that’s what you’re supposed to do with a teacher.
— That’s enough elaboration, says Max. — Mrs. Mochinski?
She wants to clock Max good. He should try living with someone who doesn’t love him. He should try pretending the show must go on when the lead actor in his play has forgotten all his lines, the stage set’s on fire, the audience is slithering out the back door.
Max can already hear Jésus’s mother squawking on the phone.
— You have a choice, he says. — Your first choice is to apologize to Mrs. Mochinski. Your second choice is to apologize to Mrs. Mochinski.
— I gave her an apple, and instead of saying thank you, she kicked me! says Jésus. — It’s assault and battery!
— Mrs. Mochinski? says the dead boy’s principal.
— I did not kick Mr. García Hernández, says Mrs. Mo Mo Mocknee-ass. — I am shocked that I would be accused of such an act. We can’t deny that Jésus has a fanciful imagination, Principal Applegate. If he’d apply that imagination to his Shakespeare studies, rather than toward clumsy mind games with his teachers—
— Phlpt! splutters Jésus.
— Jésus, apologize, says the principal.
— For what?
— Did you or did you not provoke Mrs. Mochinski?
— You are two very screwed-up individuals, splutters Jésus, twisting his baseball cap right way around, kicking his oversized feet into the table leg. — You both need to see a shrink. I tried to be nice, and she kicked me in the ass. She’s lying!
Jésus and Mrs. Mochinski infernal twins. Max scrubs his hands through his thick mass of perfectly white hair. White and thick as a horse’s mane. He breathes a long sigh and drops his chin to his chest.
Maureen sits taut, willing the menopausal flames to leap up and immolate them all. Jésus lifts his cap, smooths back his hair, replaces the cap.
Principal Applegate finally leans forward over the table toward them and tents his fingers in front of his nose. He leans his nostrils on his thumbs, pulls at his nostrils until his nose stretches into a pig’s snout.
— I’m really extremely very tired, he says.
Maureen rubs her hands together nervously. Max appears to be melting, his body sagging and dripping. Jésus spreads his legs even wider, if such a thing were possible.
Principal Applegate closes his eyes.
He snores.
Maureen
She’s so busy trying to staple and Scotch-tape together the pieces of her own construction-paper heart, that the dead boy’s teacher, otherwise known as Miss Rule, Ms Mo, Miz M., sometimes forgets about Patrick, his empty desk and chair less and less distressing as time passes. How sad that the hole in the middle of the classroom is thickening into normal. The same kid, Patrick, who moth-fluttered around her at the Pita Pit as
king her for advice about his skateboard, her light cold and futile.
She’s trying to wipe chalk off her hands with the chalky rag in her desk— why she still insists on wearing black clothes to this job after all these years, her hands cadaver dry from all the chalk dust, she’ll never know — when she’s sure she hears his skateboard wheels rumbling over the hallway linoleum outside her room. The thought of his skateboard, alone in the hallways, crumples her into a heap.
When she sees the chubby head guidance counsellor in his leprechaun beard galumphing in the direction of the main office, sashaying to the office with a purple binder gripped in his hands, she can’t help calling to him, — Hey there! Hey! and she remembers that the rest of the teachers were clicking and chewing in the teachers’ lounge about how he’s propped a framed picture of Max on his office desk.
— Can I talk to you? she asks.
— Anytime.
Up close, the top of her head only reaches his chin, so maybe he isn’t a leprechaun. More of a pookah. Wide as a pookah. Short grey whiskers bristle among the black around his mouth. Men with beards remind her of billy goats. And a billy goat once bit her hard on the finger at a petting zoo.
When she mentions Patrick Furey, his mouth turns down the way her ex-husband’s mouth did whenever she told him something important, a fish’s flat lips.
— He came to see me once, he says. He slides his hand along the edge of the binder, his body edging back in the direction of the main office, but his feet remaining in place, toes toward her. Polite body language. Barely.
— Well, what did he say? she asks. She slaps her hands against her hips and leaves behind faint white chalk finger and palm prints.
— The conversation he and I had is confidential, he says. — So I can’t really go into detail about what we talked about. There’s nothing we can do about it now, he says, frowning more. — Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. Suicide contagion, he whispers, his billy goat lips bristling in her ear.
Like she can’t tell when a bearded pipsqueak like him is trying to evade her. The boy is dead— what does confidentiality matter now? After working for nearly twenty years with teenagers and their I didn’t do its and assorted bullshit, she can tell when a stinkbomb’s been lobbed her way. She can smell the soap and shampoo, the chemical cleaners, and the lying spray underneath it all.
— You’ll have to go through the regular channels to find out how his parents are doing, he says, scratching his stubbly double chin. — The father’s really angry, I think.
She wonders how he could ever counsel anyone about anything at all.
Then he leans in again, startling her. — I hate my job now, he says. She can see separate silver hairs glittering in his beard he is so close. — I should take up basket-weaving. I’ve heard it’s hard work, but I can’t be any worse at it than I have been at this job.
Maureen wonders if she is dreaming, still asleep in her lonely divorcée bed.
— I’m going to go talk to Max, she says, clapping her hands together. A small cloud of dust spurts up between them. — Patrick was a victim of bullying. He told me so, he came to me and there’s no issue of confidentiality and this should be public.
Walter’s face breaks open into a summery smile, a charming gap between his two front teeth. — That’s an awesome idea, Maureen, he says. — Make Max explain why he didn’t help Patrick get his skateboard back. You make this all public.
He disappears through the door leading to the north staircase at the far end of the hall. She swears she hears him whistling.
She will find Max and tell him exactly how pooey it was, the way he handled Patrick and the skateboard situation. She will force him to stay awake while she talks to him, tells the parents, tells the cops, tells the media that the boy was a victim of bullying because he was gay. Or else what? She isn’t sure. What if someone asks her why she didn’t do anything when the boy was still alive? Why didn’t she do more? What was she thinking when he came up to her at the Pita Pit? Maybe she won’t threaten Max at all, just give him a rubber rain hat and a big stick for when the frogs begin falling out of the sky and four horsemen come a-knocking on the school doors. That boy fell from the sky, and even though it was Max’s job, her job, the pookah’s job, to hold out the net, no one caught him because no one wanted to get shit on their clothes. She’s a gerbil in a wheel, running and running, spinning, thinking she’s running a marathon, running to paradise, when really she’s headed nowhere at all.
Ginger
He lies on his back among the headstones, among the dark pines. The tree branches shushing in the breeze, the occasional whir and bump of a car driving by on the other side of the chain-link fence. He lies with his hands at his sides, he holds his breath. Pretending to be dead. Imagining being dead. Even in the dark, the black branches of the trees stretching above him, the occasional pinprick of star, the sky washed with streetlight. He’s still too much alive. He will never have a chance of seeing Patrick ever again unless he’s dead. Ginger closes his eyes.
Because everything’s a garble. Every day a Monday, that horrible loop back to the day that Ginger thought was like every day but wasn’t. The sun blew up and the world incinerated. He wishes that every night could be like that last night they met here, right on this spot. He wishes he could be dead too. The sound of car wheels, and car engines, the occasional far-off siren. The tree branches rustling, the smell of snow, of fermenting pine needles, the sound of winter chill, of gophers hibernating under the ground. Right here in this spot.
He would like to go lie down on Furey’s grave. If he could find it. If he could ask.
Ginger remembers licking Furey’s stomach at night, in the cemetery, the safe and luscious dark. The scent of pine trees.
He opens his eyes. Rubs his hand on the cold smooth granite of the tombstone next to him. It’s just rock. Everything, in the end, just rock. He wishes a blizzard would swirl in, bury him.
Fifth Monday After Furey
Max
Max is lusting for a cigarette when he bumps into Walter in the graffitied stairwell, and his heart shrinks into the first dimension. Walter, please, he wants to say, but he cannot say it and before he can think the words he might say, Walter grabs him in his arms and kisses him passionately on the mouth. The head of Guidance giving a passionate kiss to the principal in the school’s north stairwell, the kiss lasting seventeen seconds, their lips and tongues wild and drunk, Walter’s mouth tasting of sesame seeds and root beer, how desperate Walter must be, how unhappy, to break their rules and finally give in. Max’s mouth finally full of a drug much more satisfying than nicotine.
But the way it really happens is this:
Max, starving for a cigarette, bumps into Walter on the stairwell. His body craters. Walter, please, he wants to say, but he cannot say it, and before he can think the words he might say, Walter briefly meets his eyes as he brushes by Max down the next flight of stairs and Max hears the door below click shut. How desperate Walter must be, how unhappy, to break their rules and be in such close proximity to Max. Walter looked into Max’s eyes. They almost touched. If they were still together, that would surely mean sex tonight. Walter’s blazer flicking Max’s hip. Max’s teeth gripping the inside of his face.
Petra
Petra and Ginger grind past each other in the hallways stuffed with students. Ginger pushing straight ahead, a car angled too close to a concrete pillar. Scraping. Petra alone and head forward. Pretend.
He studies in the library at a table by himself, standing up and shifting his bag and papers to a new table when she tries to sit next to him. He has mutated into an identically charged particle. During her morning spare, she buys a bouquet of red roses, twelve exactly, wrapped in green tissue paper, tied with slippery blue ribbon, and props the roses on the windshield of his car.
The drooping roses are carefully perched on the concrete parking divider at the end of the day. Wizened roses, tissue paper, shiny blue ribbon and parking lot concrete. She
picks up the bouquet, the green paper crackling in her hand. Sniffs the flowers.
Meet me or IL tel the hol skool, she texts him, her hands shaking and cold as she clicks in the words on her phone.
The beautiful chime of a message in her inbox, she tears it open, her lover is finally talking to her!
Then youll B a murderer 2 x, says the message from Ginger.
She repulses him.
She scratches u r a petra with her pen into the wood of her desk at home.
The graffiti in the north stairwell painted over with grey, its scribbled cacophony erased. One of the school janitors scrubs off the graffiti scribbled across the dead boy’s locker. Scratches a fine, spiralling pattern into the paint. The words still there as ghosts.
Maureen
Mrs. Maureen Birdie Siobhan Rule Mochinski hurries after Max, who seems to be walking, but moves so fast he must be running. She clicks after him, how things have changed, usually it’s the other way around: — Maureen, he might tell her in that preachy principal voice of his, — a parent’s complained the speaker you brought into your class was inappropriate. — Maureen, he might bark like a sergeant and she a lowly cadet, — you’re not fulfilling your extra-curricular obligations so I’m assigning you to cafeteria supervision every other day for the rest of the year.